Multimedia conference calls typically involve communicating voice, video, and/or data information between multiple endpoints. With the proliferation of data networks, multimedia conferencing is migrating from traditional circuit-switched networks to packet networks. To establish a multimedia conference call over a packet network, a conferencing server typically operates to coordinate and manage the conference call. The conferencing server receives a video stream from a sending participant and multicasts the video stream to other participants in the conference call.
As quality of service for packet networks increases, a conferencing server may manage a conference call with increasingly larger numbers of client terminals. Further, the client terminals may be geographically remote from each other, such as for national or international conference calls. A conferencing server, however, may have limited media processing resources. A packet network used by the conference call may also have limited bandwidth as well. Consequently, there may be a substantial need to improve conference call techniques to make efficient use of available conference call resources such as conferencing servers and/or client terminals.